Atlas Monte Carlo Interfaces

Ian Hinchliffe  and Giorgos Stavropoulos


Click here to submit  a bug  report or  request
 

Last Changed  Sept  22 2006.



This documents atlas release 12.0.x.  See here for validation issues





Code can be browsed here. This is always the best way to figure out what is going on. There is also an extensive list of examples  here

This page assumes that you know how to run athena, if not please consult the tutorial


There is also a  tutorial on event generation which includes examples.

This page  provides some documentation of the Atlas Monte Carlo Generators and their incorporation into Athena. The documentation is updated only on production releases. The current production releases are 11.0.4 and 11.0.5. 12.0.x is not yet validated  Users are advised not to use intermediate releases unless they  are aware that intermediate releases are in flux and may have bugs.

This page does NOT PROVIDE documentation on the event generators themselves. For this you must consult the manuals provided by the authors of Herwig, Pythia, MC@NLO,  etc. These manuals will tell you how to run these programs standalone outside of the athena framework. You are expected to have read this documentation before reading the material on athena interface. General introductory material can be found here and here


Note that the documentation web pages are only updated on each major release. For intermediate information users should consult the Changelogs or the documentation in CVS which can be found in the doc area of CVS. For example, see here for the Pythia documentation. Note that this link contains only the most recent documentation. Users can also consult the doc area of the actual release that they are using which can be found at, for example, /afs/cern.ch/atlas/software/dist/<Release>/Generators/Pythia_i/<tab>/doc 

The individual Generators are run from inside Athena and converted into a common format by  mapping into HepMC format and a container of these is placed into the transient event store under Storegate. This event can be made persistent by using AthenaPool. The event  is presented for downstream use by simulation, for example by Geant-4 or the Atlfast simulation. 

It is also used for the Event Generation for Rome. The user is assumed to know how to run athena.  The bare minimum is how to make a TestRelease area from which to work. If you do not know this start here and here . Each available Generator has separate documentation describing its use. Simple Filtering Algorithms are provided as well as an example of how to access the events and histogram the data.

The output of all the generators in atlas/athena is in CLHEP units of mm/MeV. The units for the input parameters depend on the package; see the package documentation below.

An algorithm is also available  to allow  users to write out events (in Pool format) and read them back in.  Example jobOptions files can be found in  /afs/cern.ch/atlas/software/builds/AtlasSimulation/x.y.z/Generators/GeneratorObjectsAthenaPool/<Tab>/share
where x.y.z is the release. (e.g.  2.0.3 for release 12.0.3!) and <Tab> is the tab key which will give you the right cmt tag.

Note that items listed below without hyperlinks represent packages that are in development and not yet intended for production use. If you wish to help in this development, contact Ian or Giorgos.

Note that in order to run properly one must have  PDGTABLE.MeV in the directory from which athena is run
.

Organization and methodology

How to use the  Particle Generator

How to use Isajet

How to use Pythia

How to use Taoula

How to use Photos

How to use Herwig

How to use Jimmy

How to use Hijing

How to use Alpgen

How to use AcerMC

How to use Comphep

How to use DpEMC  (new in 12.0.x)

How to use PythiaB

How to use Filtering

 How to use MadCUP interface

How to use MC@NLO There is a guide written by users here

How to use LhaPdf (this is the replacement for pdflib)

How to use Cosmic Generator. (this is under developement and is not ready for general use)

How to use Sherpa The current proceedure does not use Sherpa_i. Rather one runs Sherpa standalone, saves in HepMC and uses the following import function

How to read Sherpa HepMC output into Athena format

How to import  hepevt events from ASCII files into Athena format

How to use TruthExamples
 
Frequently Asked questions
 
Sample JobOptions files

Comment on Random numbers

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Known bugs (12.0.x)

Pythia was patched in 12.0.3. Earlier releases should not be used